Declutter Your Home and Save Memories: What To Do with Old Photos

It's almost as though you were spying on me as I am currently going through all my old photos and trying to figure out what to do with them!! I am in the midst of the very first drawer of MANY and I just happened to come across your video - thank you!! There's a lot to think about and so much work to do. It's overwhelming but definitely needs to be done! Love all your videos!

My dear brother-in-law started a photo project about 10 years ago. He's retired and decided to scan family photos and transfer them to DVDs. There are 9 children in our family so you can imagine him scanning photo after photo. He's a very patient man to have undertaken that tedious project and we all are so grateful to him. He gave everyone a DVD of my mom and dad's childhood, wedding, years in-between, and their 60th wedding anniversary. Everyone received a DVD of our grandparents lives, and each family member received a DVD of their own childhood and family events. . We have beautiful memories to cherish.

I have started this project and just can’t finish…..I’m odd in that I can’t stand to throw the old photos away….the comments on the back, the thoughts of who has actually held these photos…..I just can’t get over it😝

I was a single parent of two children and a full time professional. I always felt really bad about not organizing my children's childhood photos into albums beyond infancy. My daughter as a teenager told me "You're never going to do that, Mum." When she was an adult, I told her she was right and she was so disappointed. I moved into a new home and in my room (office/den/ craft and exercise room), I basically lined two of the walls with bulletin boards. All the photos were in a trunk, so I went through them and pulled out my favourites. I filled the bulletin boards with the photos , report cards, class photos, in a fairly random way and my adult children absolutely love them. Their friends are very interested, too. Photo albums get put away and are largely unlooked at. I thought of taking the photos down and my children vociferously didn't want me to do it. So they're still there and we all enjoy them.

When my parents died, we had this problem. We ended up buying an app for our phone called Photomyne. We were able to scan photos onto our phones, and then put them in a on-line album. We could put in captions, identifying people and the situation, and share them with siblings and nieces and nephews.

I was A MAZED at how intense ‘ & beautiful my parents & grandparents slides are!! .. The COLOR IS GORGEOUS!!!

When going through pictures I sometimes keep some of them simply because sometimes they have a bit of history in them. I was born in the 50’s and some of my childhood pics have things like my dads old car from that era.

We made two sets of our pics and keep one set in storage in case of a fire. We have backup plus some are online.

I used a company called 'Nembur' out of Logan, UT to digitize some VHS tapes. They had a great turnaround time. They also sent us a link I was able to pass to all the family members. We could download the pictures we wanted to keep directly from that or pay to keep the link up as long as we wanted. They were better price than any others I found. And their customer service was fantastic!

My husband won't let me throw out a photo, even if it's so dark you can barely make out what it is. The problem with digitizing is that technology changes and you're stuck with no way to access them anymore.

I had 3 containers of photos. Before I retired I spent 3 weekends going thru them and sorted (had a lot of duplicates especially school pics of the children which I trashed). Had these scanned and sent to cloud. I now have these rotating randomly on my Nixplay constantly. I trashed all the hard copies. ONE OF THE BEST THINGS I HAVE EVER DONE!

Just went through my mom's photos. I had photos of cousins as children at family events with my mom and dad and sent them back to those cousins. They've loved getting them and it cleared out a lot of photos.

Love photos. You don't realize how important those photos are as we move on. Sharing and looking back ...beautIful. important for our I history. Digitizing is a great idea

I have hundreds of photos of my in-law’s family and my family plus my own family. During the lockdown I ordered 10 photo albums from Amazon. Sorted all the photos, kept only that I thought important, and put them in relevant albums. I believe in having photos the old fashioned way stored in albums, clearly labelled, and written at the back of each photos people’s names and approx date.

We are going through the same thing. My husband and I lost both lost our parents within 2 years, so we have all of their pictures and slides. Plus, we have our own, as well. Your video was very helpful and gives me a starting point. Thank you!

Thanks for the tips. I’m in the middle of decluttering and preparing to move. I have at least 8 bins of photos 😮 thanks

I was in the same position had lots of old photos. When our adult children came home for Christmas, I pulled out the totes. We went through pictures and shared memories and they took what ones they wanted. Months went by and I finally was in the mood to go through the old photos again. I had piles of photos, then I broke them down into smaller piles by roughly the years they were taken.Each morning while I was having my tea, I would take pictures of the photos with my iPhone. My goal was to go through a stack every morning. In the evening I would upload the pictures to a cloud and to an SD card. With the SD card I am able to put the in my electronic picture frame and view them. I have the frame in an area where I can see it and have it on when the family comes to visit. I am so happy the process is done. Every so many months I go through my photos on my phone and upload them to the cloud then transfer them to a SD card or delete some. I also use a pic collage app to consolidate similar pictures into one.

I looked at digitizing my photos a long time ago - at that time, you could have them put on a disc or a thumb drive. Now, it seems like all of them want to store them in the cloud and charge you for it - thank you for including/finding (2) that provide the thumb drive option!

I’m using the Swedish Death Cleaning methods to declutter, but the photos are too personal to me to deal with disposing of them in any way. When I checked into some companies who digitize photos, I was stunned by the cost! I plan to check the recommendations given, but for me, cost is a big factor. I’m so glad Mark suggested checking what they do with the original photos. I really need to be prepared before I contact the companies! As Mark said; if you take them back, you have the same problem you started with! Thanks for all of your suggestions

great info, currently my sister and I are going through my mom's estate and sorting through our family photos, but it's gotten me to start looking at all of my own photos too... although I don't think I've hardly printed a photo since 2008! Luckily I'm able to scan photos for myself, but it's a HVGE time commitment, and trying to find a place to make shared albums where everyone can access (google, ancestry, etc) has been a challenge too.